DStv needs to revisit disconnection policy
FIRSTLY, before this enraged customer gives forth, I would like to thank MultiChoice customer assistant Jeremiah Pillay for his patience and perseverance in dealing with me and my complaint.
Now for the complaint. At the beginning of May, I started losing DStv channels on my TV until I ended up with only three channels – none of which was worth watching.
Investigating this on the internet, I discovered that I was not alone with this problem – it seems that many others were also affected.
Why was this happening? No satisfactory answer on the internet other than to “reset the service”. According to DStv on the internet, I had to send an SMS to 30333 with the message “reset”, followed by the card number, which I did very carefully, only to receive the reply “you have entered an invalid keyword” – although I hadn’t entered anything invalid.
I then attempted to contact DStv on my landline. A disembodied voice advised me to send a Whatsapp message which I did, only to be informed that there was no DStv WhatsApp number – although I do have one on my phone, but apparently it doesn’t work any more. What a circus!
By now, my blood pressure was reaching dangerously high levels, so I decided to wait until the next day (May 6) to follow up with DStv Customer Service in Johannesburg.
Enter Jeremiah Pillay, who was unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end of my wrath. This also resulted in a long and expensive phone call because the number given on the internet was not an 0800 number. This further added to my anger.
From what I could gather, it seems that my service had been cut because I had not paid my subscription (which is paid automatically by stop order) on the first day of May, which incidentally was a Sunday followed by a public holiday on Monday, and that I must pay a reconnection fee (which I did) and send proof of payment to DStv, which I did, but as it turned out the email address to which I sent my proof of payment is no longer in service – although I have used it in the past when experiencing similar problems with Dstv.
Proof of payment was subsequently sent to another email address, and I soon received an acknowledgement of receipt.
I had been assured that as soon as my proof of payment was received, my service would be reconnected. Well, that didn’t happen. However, on the afternoon of the following day, a few channels were restored. The remainder eventually followed the next day.
Now for some history – a number of years ago, I encountered a similar problem of “non-payment” on the first day of the month, resulting in my service being cut, although my stop order was set up to activate on the first of the month regardless. But the first of the month happened to be on a long weekend, so payment was not received on the 1st, and my service was immediately cut.
Trying to get this through to the official at DStv proved impossible until I got a letter from my bank stating that payment had been made. I can only surmise that something similar happened on this occasion as the 1st of May 2022 was on a Sunday, followed on the Monday by a public holiday. But that is not my problem.
Why does DStv’s accounting system not allow for the 1st of a month falling on a Sunday, which might be followed by a public holiday? I should never have had my service disconnected, and if that had happened because of DStv’s hopeless IT accounting system, then I should never have had to pay a reconnection fee.